The Pokémon Coma Theory
by Nauran
Summary: Ever wonder why Ash Ketchum never ages? Why characters keep getting replaced? Why things aren't as real as they should be? This is it. A passage on something that has changed many Pokémon fans' perceptions. And "ruined their childhoods". WARNING: Controversial. Numerous online debates have been made to disprove or support this theory in forums, blogs and various websites.


**The Pokémon Coma Theory**

After the god-like thunderbolt attack from Pikachu on the flock of raging Spearow, Ash suffered electrical damage to his brain, which put him into a comatose state. With this unexpected event, Ash's subconscious created a world for him where he can live, grow, and not be subjected to death or any related concepts. From this, stems the creation of everything he has loved and everyone he has travelled with.

This is his ideal world.

**Misty**, being the only travelling companion that he saw prior to the lightning strike, was only interacted with for a short time in the real world. In that time, she rescued him, slapped him, yelled at him, and he then took her bike. Unfortunately, these moments were the only things Ash's mind could use when recreating her for his new world. That is why she is overly, regularly aggressive. But as she is a girl, his perception of feminism comes into play, which fills the rest of her personality. Ash developed an unconscious attraction to her, which was planted in Misty as a means of a romance conduit. Because he was subjected to the genre of love by the world's media so much from one to ten years old, he expected it to be somewhere near him on a regular basis, but, because he was ten, not close enough to be really felt. Misty is (ultimately) unattainable, because Ash never knew her well enough in the real world.

However, being only ten years old during the incident, Ash has limited romantic sense, and the whole relationship was blocked and ended up just being good friendship. That is why he appears to be dense and oblivious to romantic affection wherever it is found near him. He will never grow out of his ten year old psyche.

**Brock** was simply a caregiver. His unrealistic ease of creating healthy food and performing excellent survival skills is Ash's subconscious creating a person who can take care of him and show him how to take care of himself in times of need. Being ten years old, he had limited to no knowledge of wilderness survival, so Brock was created. His regular and impulsive romantic gestures are also a part of Ash's personality. Whenever Brock comes on to a woman, Ash either shrugs it off or completely ignores it. This is exactly what he does with his own romanticism. Again, being only ten years old at the time plays a major role in this aspect.

Any signs of someone else aging or developing threatened to traumatize him, so that person would quickly be replaced by a similar being in terms of requirement.

**Tracey Sketchit** was a very closely created fusion of both Ash himself, and Brock. The young enthusiasm of pokémon-related knowledge, and the extraordinary care-giving abilities. It was also a time of calming down after the frustrations Brock caused Ash with his non-stop love-related attitude. But once Ash realised that he could grow up eventually (but never really would), he needed an outlet for his developing hormonal instincts, so he brought back Brock. And with Tracey, he was discarded into an environment and career that Ash previously thought of himself to have as a future possibility: working under one of his idols, Professor Oak.

With such little concentration on anything that didn't have an aspect of pokémon involvement, Ash's mind's world has little to do with real-life issues and creatures. This is majorly the reason why there is barely any reference and/or appearance of any animal life. And with so many things being left out of Ash's ten-year-old focus, he could barely create a world with serious political or social strife, which is why the society he lives in is so peaceful and does not get in the way of his pokémon journey.

**May** is, in a sense, another Misty, but toned down greatly, mixed with traits of Ash's, and became a mental exercise for Ash. **Max** came with her, solely to keep practicality. As Ash found out he was getting better at training, he thought that he might be able to pass on his knowledge through teaching May. But it didn't go all accordingly, so she was cast aside, taking a part of Ash with her. May was the first friend to really _need_ Ash, but his subconscious deduced that May would eventually surpass his teachings, and that would cause the loss of the main purpose of creating May, as well as reminding him of ageing once again.

**Dawn** was another chance at love, and heavily reflected Ash's personality. Determined, enthusiastic, fun-loving and challenge-seeking. Another important thing to note is that May and Misty got sick of Brock's romantic attitude one time or another, while Dawn does the very same thing Ash has always done; shrugs it off and ignores it. But once Ash's subconscious realised that his ideal soulmate shouldn't be so similar to himself in terms of personality, she was removed.

Ash's rivals are mostly, if not all, possible futures he envisions for himself, which partly explains why they are older than him and why they are, above all, special challenges to overcome, which sets new length for the coma period. Otherwise, with no regular challenges, his time being comatose would be too dull for his interests.

**Gary Oak **was built on from what Ash remembers of him, which is quite a lot, since they were childhood friends. He goes on to be a great trainer, but settles down after a suitable amount of accomplishments and begins a career as a researcher. Being the only person he truly knew before the thunderbolt incident, Gary is more or less the same as he always has been. He may have softened in his later 'years', but his presence as a strong adversary to Ash will always be there. Gary awakens a thriving side of Ash, a side that opens his strength of will. If Ash were to ever be one step away from mastery, Gary would be the last challenge he would face.

**Paul**, on the other hand, is the darkest and most aggressive aspect of Ash, and the strongest individual in the series of challenging rivals Ash's mind has created. Paul wants nothing to do with weakness, and strives to become powerful by overcoming anything in his way, to obtain whatever he desires. He is always pushing for something more, and Paul's conception was one of the most drastic changes to Ash's world he could have experienced. With the same goals in mind but with a completely different outlook on methods, Ash and Paul's conflicting confrontations always affected Ash negatively, bringing forth a darker willfulness than what Gary or any other person evokes.

**Team Rocket** are the qualities of himself Ash deems 'negative', but at the same time, the qualities he may come to terms with someday. Jessie represents his stubbornness' threshold, James represents Ash's willingness to take physical treasures, and Meowth represents Ash's deceiving and cunning. All these traits centre on one main objective: to take something Ash wants for himself. The negative form of his well-known determination, the polar opposite of this stand-out trait of his, is to simply take what he believes is his. And what better thing to steal than his own starter pokémon? The trio's constant desire to steal Ash's first pokémon is a message being sent from one part of his mind to the other.

And that message is this:

_"Let me have **Pikachu**. Start over. I will carry the cause of our pain."_

By this, Ash's 'Team Rocket side' is pointing out that Pikachu was the cause of his coma, and that they would be willing to carry the burden in the darker corner of his mind so that he may live on without the grief Pikachu may further cause. But this has an adverse effect on Ash himself. Instead of despising the origin of his pain, he loves him dearly, more so than any other of his friends. This puts Ash's light and darker sides in an ever-lasting stalemate, in which Team Rocket will never be successful in capturing Pikachu but keep trying nevertheless.

**Mewtwo**, being the most malevolent-seeming of creatures Ash has ever encountered, is a special, very innovative form of treatment for Ash's comatose state. Mewtwo and his enhanced clone pokémon were speculated to have been created by a being _other_ than Ash's subconscious, to take down every mental guard Ash's mind had put up to protect and keep him in his 'sleep'. In this case, the guards were the original pokémon of his world. The treatment involved the cloned pokémon using brute strength to fight. No special pokémon attacks, just sheer force. But this brawl put a huge shock to Ash's system, and the treatment of Mewtwo's attack was (possibly externally) cancelled. With a fear of ever coming across something so hostile and destructive again, Ash's mind subsequently put safeguards on everything in his world, down-playing all human violence and pokémon attacks, especially Pikachu's, and lessening their actual strength so that no actual harm could occur to him.

Whenever Ash nears a championship, he must quickly be put in his place so he doesn't get any closer to his dream of Pokémon Mastery. For if that happens, he will wake up from his coma. To stop this, he is beaten down just before his possible victory, goes to another region, and is built back up again with similar qualities, to continue the comatose cycle in the most plausible manner. How could any significant character that has participated in a league not know of Ash until meeting him face-to-face after so many of his league entries? The reason is that every time he enters an unfamiliar region, he reinvents himself, social status and all, so that no one with power is able to recognize him.

This is his ideal world. But that doesn't mean it's the right world for him.

Just like all things in life, an end will come.

An end will come.


End file.
